


Button Up Your Overcoat

by stitchy



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Eddie Lives but we don't need to relitigate it, Established Relationship, Family Planning, Fix-It, Halloween, M/M, POV Eddie Kaspbrak, Post-Canon, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 14:43:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20798327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy
Summary: “It’s just a gut check, there is no gun to your balls here,” says Richie. "But if you were gonna be a dad... what do you think you’d like about it?”Eddie glances at the dog, who just looks back at him like,I dunno, man, he didn’t clear this with me. I thought we were just hanging out and watching some Treehouse of Horror tonight.





	Button Up Your Overcoat

**Author's Note:**

> Heeeyy it's me again, and my fourth reddie fic in a month!! I have so many other things I'm supposed to be doing!! :D

“Kids these days,” mutters Richie. “Buncha lamewads.” He closes the front door behind him with his foot, his hands occupied with a salad bowl full of peppermint patties- the only thing he and Eddie won’t gorge themselves on before the trick-or-treaters can get to ‘em.

“Tell me about it.”

These spoiled Hollywood brats don’t know how good they’ve got it. Full size candy bars, neighbors with industry-grade special FX, and infuriatingly perfect weather don’t happen just anywhere. Eddie still has a chip on his shoulder from the Halloween when he was eight and he had refused a haircut all summer to go as the perfect Atreyu from _ Neverending Story- _ only for his mother to force him to wear longjohns under his costume. 

At least the dog has finally overcome the instinct to tear a frightened path up the stairs to the bedroom every time the doorbell rings. Eddie lounges on the couch again and reaches out to pat Pumpkin, who is in fact dressed as a pumpkin, on the head.

Richie nudges over one of Eddie’s house plants so he can leave the bowl closer to the door, then comes up behind the couch and flops in half over the headrest, his knuckles grazing Eddie’s chest.

“Are you still cranky that ten year old trick-or-treaters don't recognize your Ted costume?”

Chin bouncing against the leather of the cushion, Richie nods sadly. “We’re supposed to be in the midst of a Keanu Reeves renaissance.”

Eddie chuckles fondly. The quest Richie had undertaken for baggy jeans and the perfect _ Wham! _shirt to complete their Bill and Ted couple’s costume was kind of sweet, actually. He hooks his fingers into one of Richie’s hands. “It’s not all bad. You tricked me into wearing a crop top didn’t you?”

Richie slithers down over the back of the couch, face planting into Eddie’s stomach. “Most excellent,” he muffles. Their legs bump and tangle until they get comfortable, with Richie sprawled out on top Eddie, rubbing his nose into the abdominal real estate between his cut-off sweatshirt and boxers.  
  
“Just think of all the hot bellybutton action we’d be missing out on if we’d gone with the Blues Brothers,” says Eddie. The teasing scratch of stubble on his skin is making up for the nine million times he’s had to hike his pants tonight. Might even be a little _ too _ enjoyable for- “If you give me a boner, you’re answering the door alone.”

“_‘If’_?!” Taking that as a challenge, Richie sticks out his tongue and slowly swipes along Eddie’s hip bone, then down until he starts to dip into his clothes.

“Fuck. You must _ really _ wanna answer the door alone.”

Richie grins up at Eddie, high-top sneakers kicking behind him triumphantly.

_ BZzzzzzzz! _

“I got it, Eds.” Richie drops one last little kiss on his belly before he pushes himself up off the couch.

Eddie watches him set his gait wide and loose before picking up the candy bowl again and throwing the door open.  
  
“Aw, _ bogus_, I was expecting to give some lil dude candy but turns out someone just ding dong ditched this most righteous panda on the doorstep.”  
  
Eddie can’t quite see who’s there with the angle of the couch, but he can hear the laugh of a toddler and their wrangler.

“What do you say?”

“Fricker Feeeeet!” trills a tiny voice.

Candy drops into a relatively empty sounding plastic bucket. Must be early in the night for this crew.

“Thanks! Goodnight!” says an adult.

“Be excellent to each other!”

Then Richie reappears at the foot of the couch. He pulls on the sleeves of the jacket tied around his waist thoughtfully. “Hey Eddie?”

He finds himself matching the high note of Richie’s question absentmindedly. “Hey Richie?” 

“Random question-” 

Eddie sits up immediately, spooking Pumpkin, who yaps once in reproach. Usually Richie’s ‘random questions’ are under the radar alerts to some domestic mishap or other.

_ Uhm, random question; where do you keep the extra paper towels? There’s been a wine mistake. _

He didn’t hear anything crash, though. Eddie raises his eyebrows at Richie expectantly.

“Do you like kids?” asks Richie, head tilted curiously.

“Do _ you _like kids? A minute ago you called that Groot a lamewad.”

“Sure.” Richie slides back onto the couch and crawls between Eddie’s knees again. “As a professional, I have the utmost respect for their work.”

Eddie squints. “Really?”

“They’re funnier than me! ‘Fricker Feet’?”

“Well that’s not hard. The dog is funnier than you,” Eddie smirks.

Richie shrugs with one shoulder then starts pushing him back so he can resume his pillowfication of Eddie. “Pumpkin is a gifted physical comedian, but he does fall short in the one-liner department. There’s never been a show called _ Dogs Say The Darndest Things_.”

Eddie scoffs. “Too bad we can’t kidnap a kid just so you can mine them for material.”

“Nah, that’s what we have a relationship for,” says Richie, rolling his eyes. “Gems like _ ‘the dog is funnier than you’_.” Eddie almost relaxes. Then Richie switches gears and comes over with a serious look, his eyebrows knit together. “But- would you want to have a baby with me?”

Now, Richie’s big and half of his weight is currently laid on top of Eddie’s lungs, but he’s not actually infinite-mass-that-compresses-all-your-molecules-into-diamond big. Still, it takes Eddie a full three Mississippis to thaw back into meat again so he can answer.

“Uhh.” It’s not _ much _ of an answer.

“It’s just a gut check, there is no gun to your balls here,” says Richie. He nestles his chin on his hands, folded over Eddie’s heart and tries again. “But if you were gonna be a dad... what do you think you’d like about it?”

Eddie glances at Pumpkin, who just looks back at him like, _ I dunno, man, he didn’t clear this with me. I thought we were just hanging out and watching some Treehouse of Horror tonight. _

“I... I haven’t thought about it much.” Not before when he was with Myra, certainly. She had always said that he was her baby. In hindsight: _ yikes_. “I guess there’d be someone to teach- well... I was never allowed to play any sports.” But _ something_. Eddie wracks his brain. _ Dad things? _He hasn’t had a dad in over thirty five years. Can’t remember a single thing he’d done with Frank Kaspbrak before he’d died. Did other dads take their kids fishing, maybe? He could never stomach the idea of hooking worms, never mind touching a fish’s slimy body once it was caught. Eddie thinks instead of the tasteless fish sticks that were always in the freezer. “Refrigerator drawings are nice. Hand made cards. Hand turkeys. Those- glue things made with glitter and pasta?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Richie says, smiling. It's an uncharacteristically dreamy smile, for Richie.

Eddie gasps melodramatically. “Richie, you’re not trying to tell me... I did wonder when you were gagging in the bathroom this morning, but we’ve been so careful!”

Richie snorts. “Nope. That was just a Richie’s reach exceeding his grasp.” He buries his face in Eddie’s chest in an exaggerated display of shame.

“You went back for those Thai leftovers, didn’t you?”

“...Yeah.”

He rubs Richie’s back in a soothing circle. “Poor Richie,” he sighs. He should probably go ahead and trash leftovers of any meal that fires up his heartburn after the first go around, though he worries that’s a slippery slope to unreasonably prohibiting certain foods all together. He had always hated it when his mother treated simple indigestion like a near-death experience.

Richie is an adult who can roll his eyes at Eddie and eat whatever curry he likes, though. When it comes to a defenseless child, like Eddie had been with his mother- can he be trusted not to go too far? Because it wasn’t really about a ban on sports and nuts, and being forced to wear a thermal in the admittedly near-freezing Maine October, was it? It was about control and isolation. If he was ever sick from anything, it was the decay of healthy boundaries. He’s aware of that since returning to Derry, and he likes to think that awareness has helped make it better, but is he healed _enough_? Can you ever really recover from that kind of damage, or is it something he’s cursed to spread like an infection?

It’s a big fucking question that he dreads to think about.

“Are we? Really having this conversation?” Eddie asks. Maybe he can warm up with a few softballs.

“Sure."

“It’s just a conversation,” Eddie confirms. A very scary conversation appropriately scheduled on Halloween. _ Dread dread dread. _ “We’re not deciding right now.”

“Yep. Just talking about it.” Richie lays his head on Eddie’s chest and takes pity on Pumpkin, who whines to be part of the cuddle pile but knows he is not allowed on the couch. He scratches the dog’s head as he thinks. “This one of those things serious couples are supposed to hammer out before it comes up, right? We’re pretty serious aren’t we? We’ve got a dog. We just went in together on a new washer/dryer.”

It’s true they’ve been living out of each other's pockets for over a year now, as happily inseperable as ever. They’ve got stable careers and a good home. They’ve loved each other _ very _ much, for a _ very _ long time. And, Eddie thinks, _ often _enough that if they were straight they would absolutely have had a wider conversation about birth control at this point. ‘Serious’ was probably underselling it.

“We are! Of course. But it’s not likely to happen suddenly,” Eddie sputters. “It’d take some actual effort, you know. Adoption, surrogacy, whatever- it could take years. Unless Mike’s been slutting it up big time in Florida, we’re not gonna find ourselves in a _ Three Men and a Baby _ scenario by accident.”

Richie closes one eye and makes his forefingers and thumbs into a picture frame, squaring it on Eddie. “You do realize you’d be the Tom Selleck, though, right?” He tilts his head appraisingly. “Love that look for you, Eds. You’d be very sexy with a moustache.”

Distracted from his point by Richie’s expert flattery, Eddie rubs his mouth thoughtfully. “You’d be into that?”

“I’d be into you even if you had a chin strap, Eds.” Richie crawls a few inches higher, twitching his nose like a rabbit and then kisses him. It’s a poor imitation of a moustache, of course, but it arrows straight through Eddie with tenderness. “I’m smitten and I’ve completely lost objectivity. Whatever you do, short of murder- and even then I just ask that you loop me in.” Richie leans in to kiss Eddie again, properly, and some of the dread melts away.

_ BzzzzZZt! _

“Hold that thought.” Richie practically vaults off of Eddie and the couch, mid ear nibble.

Eddie sits up, slightly doped. “We could... not answer.” But Richie pulls on his hand and drags him to the door.

“And miss out on what’s behind Door #1? This is the only night of the year you’re gonna get such a convenient demonstration of child adorableness. Literal door to door service.”

Richie shoves the candy bowl into Eddie’s hands and opens the door to a girl in an Aloha shirt and snow pants who’s probably ten and a smaller sibling in a skeleton mask.

“Greetings my excellent friends,” says Richie, grabbing fistfuls of candy for each.

The two raise their spiderwebbed plastic bags high. “Trick or Treat!”

“What are you dressed as?” Eddie asks, eyeing the disparate elements of the girl’s costume.

She adjusts the furry white ears on top of her head and pulls a snorkel mask from around her neck up to her face. “Climate change.”

“Ooo,” says Eddie, recognizing the suggestion of a polar bear. It is very charming. Damnit Richie. “Very scary. Great job.”

Richie turns to Eddie, mouthing _I_ _told you so._

“Thank you!”

They wave off the two kids, already sprinting back down the driveway to the sidewalk. “Party on dudes!” 

No sooner is the door shut, Richie starts up again. “Means of acquisition aside- don’t you worry about Pumpkin being an only child?” His pinching fingers go straight for Eddie’s cheeks. “They’re so susceptible to bullying.”

Eddie drops the candy bowl by the door so he can flip Richie off. “Oh, suck my dick, Tozier.”

Richie chases him back to the couch, using the shirt tied at Eddie’s hips like reigns. “I think the record will show that’s an incentive for bad behavior, not a punishment.”

“Don’t even think about it. Still processing some heavy shit over here.” When Eddie sits again he starts rubbing his eyes to ward off a tension headache.

This isn’t coming from nowhere. There have been other Big Picture discussions like this lately. Did they want to get property up near Bev and Ben? Would Eddie like to get involved in city politics? Their lives had been in a decades long holding pattern until recently, and now they’re coming in for a landing. He’s well aware that if there’s anything that they want to remake themselves as, now’s the time. It’s midlife crisis season, and they’ve already got a convertible, a divorce, and two career shifts between them. Check, check, double check! While they’re at it, what the fuck else can they upheave?

“You okay, Eds?”

There’s a tentative touch on his knee, and when Eddie drops his hands again Richie is kneeling in front of him. He frowns at Eddie’s watery eyes.

“If you want, I can go barf in the kitchen,” Richie offers. “I know how a good scrub of the kitchen floor cheers you up.”

Eddie swallows a sniffle. “You’re so disgusting.” He threads a hand into Richie’s hair and pulls him forward by the back of the neck. As Richie climbs onto his lap, knees nudging between him and the armrest, a memory knocks loose.

He was five years old, maybe a little younger, and Daddy didn’t sleep in a bed anymore. He sat up all night in the recliner, drifting in and out to the tv. Sometimes his wracking cough would wake Eddie in the middle of the night, and he’d come into the living room, sleep-hot and troubled. It wasn’t good to be so sick and alone, he knew that. He’d climb up and snuggle in Daddy’s lap, listening to his wheeze and the incessant jingle of a drugstore commercial that must have been targeted to chronically ill insomniacs. '_Eat an apple everyday, get to bed by three, oh, take good care of yourself, you belong to me.' _ No matter how long Eddie held off sleep for his vigil- in the morning he always woke up tucked into his own bed. At least until his father was gone, anyway. After that, Eddie still sometimes fell asleep in Daddy’s recliner, but he woke there, too.

Eddie locks his arms around Richie’s waist. May as well face it head on. “Seriously, Richie, do you want a kid? Are you asking just to cover your bases, or this is something you’d really want?”

Richie lights up before he can get a word out. “Seriously, I would. Especially when I remember what we were like. I like thinking about vacations in national parks and teaching them to whistle and read and pull pranks on you. But-” his mouth makes a lopsided _ ehhh_. “I get it. I know that’s not all it takes. I’m not sure I know what it _ does _ take. Neither of us got the deluxe _Love You Forever, Like You For Always _ treatment. My parents were nice enough, but they were less like parents and more like... drinking buddies. And yours- your mom cared more, maybe. But not the right way.”

_ Not the right way_. That’s the problem, isn’t it? Eddie can want the same lovely things Richie wants and still do it wrong.

“I don’t want to be like her. I just-” his voice cracks. “I worry...”

“You can tell me.” Richie shifts, sliding his hands from Eddie’s back to the sides of his face. He thumbs away a tear. “I want to know.”

“I worry that’s the only way I know how to be,” Eddie admits. “That I cling too hard and I suffocate. That even if I want to, I shouldn’t be a parent. That I don’t know how to try and keep someone safe without making them feel like they're _ about to die_.”

“Oh, Eddie.” Richie rushes to kiss his face the same way he has always rushed to comfort Eddie. “You’re not like her. You’re not like that.” He presses his lips there again and again, until Eddie feels like his forehead is one giant smear of reassurance- until he believes what he’s hearing. “You keep me safe. I know you love me, so I try to be good, Eds. Because of you. I think- Eddie wants you to be okay, so watch your fuckin’ ass!”

Eddie chokes a laugh. He had always assumed that Richie simply put up with him as far as he could, and told him to fuck off when he couldn’t. That he got along all right _ in spite of _ Eddie. It never occurred to him that the way he worried after Richie made him feel safe and cared after and it's _ not _ too much and it’s _ not _ like dying.

“I try not to spiral out, Richie.” Eddie grips tighter around his middle in apology.

Richie pulls him into a hug and strokes the back of Eddie’s neck. “You know, you could work with someone on those thoughts. You probably _ should_,” he advises. “But what you actually _ do _is just perfect. You don’t call 911 over my acid reflux, you just make sure there’s Prilosec in the house.”

“I will always keep Prilosec in the house,” Eddie promises.

“See, you’re a provider. Very dad-like.”  
  
“Is _ that _ what dads are for? Gross burp pills?” 

“Pfft. Fuck if I know, man.” Richie politely ignores the way Eddie rubs his runny nose into his chest. “I could never catch my dad sober, so I had to have Bill teach me to drive stick.”

Having finished ruining Richie’s shirt, Eddie sits back and laughs. “He is pretty paternal.”

“I would _ so _ have Bill’s baby.”

“Hey! If anyone’s gonna knock you up, it’s gonna be me,” Eddie vows, prodding him in the gut.

It’s a shame that none of the Losers had gone in on having kids yet, although it’s understandable. When Eddie thinks abstractly that there’s still time for a next generation it feels... good.

Without warning, one of Richie’s fingers lands under Eddie’s nose. “I have an idea,” he says. “While we’re mulling over the rugrat thing- how about you grow me a dad ‘stache and I make you some macaroni art?” He grins down at Eddie. “If that ends up scratching the itch, then- hey! We just saved a fucking buttload in college tuition.”

Richie is the sweetest, cleverest idiot anyone could ever consider co-parenting with. That’s the moment Eddie decides. “Hey Richie, random question.”

“Yes, Eddie Spaghetti?”

Eddie clears his throat. “If we had a baby our household puke quota would go way the fuck up, right?”

“I know you love bleach-” Richie squints at him, “-but I feel like you’re fixating on the least appealing part of this.”

That may be true, but if Eddie thinks about it all together, he might blow a gasket. He has to take it one puke, one macaroni art, one bedtime story and one skinned knee at a time. And really? That’s probably normal.

_ BzzZzzzzt! _

“Aghhh.”

_ Bzzzzzt! Bzzzztt! _

“Is it _ still _ fucking Halloween??” Eddie lets go of Richie and flings out his arms in agony.

“My knees were kinda over this anyway,” Richie winces, straightening out his legs to slip backward off Eddie’s lap.

“Mmm, don’t worry. I’ll come sit on you and cut off your circulation next.”

Richie scrunches his nose at Eddie, who sticks out his tongue.

They get the candy and open the door once again. Three teen boys wait outside, dressed in loudly colored onesies. They don’t say ‘Trick or Treat’ so much as they grunt a few consonants and sulkily present repurposed pillowcases.  
  
Richie starts shoveling candy. “A most triumphant Halloween, dudes!”

A boy in green with glasses and googly eyes glued to his hood curls his lip at them. “Who are you guys supposed to be?”

“I’m Ted Theodore Logan-”

“-and I’m Bill S. Preston, Esquire! And we’re-”

“_Wyld Stallyns_!”

All three teens stare on blankly, impressed by neither air guitar or Richie and Eddie’s commitment to the bit.

“Aren’t you like, fifty?”

Eddie points at the kid’s googly eyes. “Well, what the hell are you supposed to be?”

“It’s from Fortnite.”

“I never found out what that is,” Richie hisses to Eddie.

“‘Cuz you’re old,” says another kid, with a broken heart printed on his furry pink onesie. Eddie is fairly certain this does not represent a Care Bear.

“Ok!” Richie tosses the last chunk of candy into the third bag. “Candy! Bag! Bye!”

Eddie shuts the door before the boys even turn to leave and leans back against the wall beside it, snickering. “I would have thought you’d be better at getting heckled by now.”

Richie takes a candy from Eddie’s bowl and rips it open. “I take it all back, kids are hideous.”

“I don’t know," Eddie grins. "The one with glasses kinda reminded me of somebody...”

Richie glares at him over a half a peppermint patty. If it weren’t for the upgrade to high-index glasses in the intervening years, the expression would be identical to teen Richie when asked-

“Are you done with that?” Eddie snatches the rest of the patty and crams it in his mouth. God, he hates peppermint. As far as he’s concerned, it is strictly a toothpaste flavor, but goading Richie is always delicious. The taste is still in his mouth when Richie crowds him up against the door, hands creeping up the open waist of his costume.

“You little shit!” He nips at Eddie’s neck.

“That’s not a very nice way to talk to your future babydaddy,” says Eddie, wrapping his arms around Richie’s in return. He feels the sharp intake of Richie’s breath on his neck as he freezes.

He pulls back, eyes wide. At least six different emotions flash across Richie’s face as he reads Eddie's. “You mean that? You want to?”

Eddie nods. “We can still practice the fun stuff before it actually happens. There’s some wholegrain rotini in the pantry right now.”

_ BzZZzzzzzt!! _

“Ohforfuckssake.”

Richie grabs the bowl, yanks the door open about a foot, then chucks it outside. When the door whumps shut the length of his body is plastered against Eddie’s again. He kisses him breathlessly, his happiness infectious to the point they keep clacking teeth as they connect laughs instead of lips.

“Better idea than rotini,” says Richie. “Let’s hit the lights then go hide upstairs and quality check some baby gravy.”

Eddie shudders. “I hate that. Never say those words.” He pushes Richie backwards, grinning. “I don’t think I love you anymore.”

“Pumpkin, sweetie, he didn’t mean that.”

Eddie turns Richie around by the hips and marches him toward the stairs. “Yes I did. This a broken home. I hope you’re okay with having two Christmases, Pumpkin.”

**Author's Note:**

> Richie: [smacks Eddie awake at 3am] Eddie... Eddie wake up. Our children will be invulnerable as fuck to “your mom” jokes, EDDIE LISTEN
> 
> Shout out to my fellow Long Island 80's babies. You remember that Genovese commercial I totally ripped off?
> 
> You can follow me on twitter, or my art blog on tumblr, both @stitcharts !


End file.
